As Anne Arundel County school bus driver Linda LaMarsh made the third stop on Mountain Road during her late run Wednesday afternoon, she put on her hazard lights, then her yellow lights, then her red lights that warn drivers not to pass while children are getting off.
The driver of a dark blue sedan traveling in the opposite direction didn't even pause while blowing through the lights and LaMarsh's extended stop sign — flagrantly committing a violation worth a $570 fine and three points on the driver's license if an officer had been there.
"There's no way I can get a tag number if they're going that fast," LaMarsh lamented.
But a camera could.
Legislation before the General Assembly would allow local school systems to mount the electronic enforcement devices on buses to deter what is treated under state law as one of the most serious nonfelony traffic violations a driver can commit.
The bills' sponsors include Republicans from Maryland's rural counties, a bloc that has tended to oppose the use of cameras to enforce laws against speeding and running red lights. But passing a stopped school bus is seen as so offensive that it has trumped libertarian ideals for even deeply conservative lawmakers.
A recent survey by the Maryland State Department of Education found that the law is broken more than 7,000 times a day statewide. But statistics from the District Court of Maryland show that only about 1,700 tickets are issued each year for the violation.
LaMarsh said she witnesses the offense almost every day as she ferries students from local schools. She counted three violations just Wednesday afternoon on her run down Mountain Road, a two- to three-lane state highway that is the main drag of the peninsula that ends at Gibson Island. But she said that during her nearly four years as a driver with Brooks Transportation Service, she can't recall ever seeing a driver being pulled over for going through her red lights.
"There's plenty of times I wish I had the authority to write tickets and fine people who run red lights," the Pasadena resident said.
The legislation is by no means a sure thing. Though there is broad sentiment in the committees that action is needed, many details have to be worked out.
A Senate committee deferred action Thursday on a statewide version of the bill. In the House, a subcommittee handling the legislation indicated that it prefers to start small by passing a local bill implementing the cameras as a pilot program in Frederick County, where school officials have started the ball rolling.
Walter Brilhart, a consultant to the Frederick County public schools, said the system's bus drivers noticed more and more drivers ignoring the signals to halt for stopped school buses.
"We've got kids as targets here," Brilhart said. "We have 325-350 buses on the road at any given time in the afternoon, and we may have 10 police officers."
But Ron Ely, founder of the organization StopBigBrotherMD, which also opposes speed and red-light cameras, said the proposed bills set the burden of proof at the lowest possible level for a conviction. The group contends that the use of automated enforcement for school bus passing could result in expensive wrongful convictions.
"In our justice system, even murderers and rapists have the presumption of innocence," he said. "Apparently some believe it is OK for drivers to be presumed guilty. In what way is it in the public interest to have a law which allows a mere accusation by a machine to be considered proof of guilt without even specifying requirements for the evidence it must collect?"
Ely said the rate of accidents connected with passing school buses is actually very low. He contends that school buses — rather than other drivers — pose the biggest threat to students in transit.
School officials acknowledge that there have been no recent cases in which Maryland children have been killed or injured by illegally passing drivers. But Brilhart said some other states have adopted similar bills named in honor of children who died in such incidents.
"Let's not do that. Let's not put a kid's name on this bill. Let's be proactive," he said.
Some drivers appear not to know that they're required to stop when they encounter a school bus coming in the opposite direction, Brilhart said, He said the problem is especially acute on four-lane, undivided highways, where stopping for a school bus is required. (The rule does not apply to drivers going the opposite direction on divided highways.)
Brilhart said Frederick officials raised their concerns with a statewide association of school transportation officials and found widespread agreement that passing school buses is a serious problem.
"Every school transportation manager is seeing this happen," he said.
To determine the extent of the violations, the state education department conducted a survey under which school bus drivers were asked to count the number of violations they saw on a single day. More than 4,700 bus drivers from every Maryland county and Baltimore City took part.
When Leon Langley, the state school transportation chief, presented the results at a hearing last month, they grabbed the attention of legislators but also provoked some skepticism.
The survey found 7,028 violations statewide, almost 4,000 of them by drivers approaching the bus in the opposite lanes. The remaining 3,000 passed from behind the bus — 366 did so on the door side where the children get on and off.
Democratic Del. James Malone, chairman of the House subcommittee that is considering the legislation, said lawmakers want to verify that information.
"It seemed like those numbers were awful high," he said.
But Langley said it's more likely that the survey understated the number of offenses because only 65 percent of the state's school bus drivers participated.
The survey found the highest numbers in Malone's home base, Baltimore County, where more than 1,700 were reported — more than two instances for every participating bus driver. Violations were most prevalent in the state's urban areas and suburban counties, while some rural counties reported few or no offenses.
Malone noted that the House and Senate versions of the statewide bills take different approaches and would have to be reconciled. The Senate bill, sponsored by Republican Sen. David Brinkley of Frederick, provides a penalty of $500 and three points, the first offense for which license points could be assessed for a camera-detected infraction. The House bill, introduced by Republican Del. Patrick Hogan, also of Frederick, would set the fine at $100 with no points.
Current law classifies the offense as a misdemeanor and lets a judge fine a violator up to $1,000, though the court-set fine for those who don't contest the charge is $570. The law calls for three points if the driver fails to stop at all and two if the motorist stops but passes the bus before the lights are turned off and the stop sign is retracted.
Malone said that while lawmakers believe something needs to be done about the problem, the legislation poses complicated issues, such as the chain of custody of video evidence.
On Thursday, members of his subcommittee reached agreement that they would seek to craft a pilot program in Frederick. Malone noted that speed cameras, authorized for use statewide in 2009, got their start in Maryland as a pilot program in Montgomery County a few years earlier.
Langley said he'd rather see the legislature adopt a statewide bill this year — adding that Montgomery, Prince George's and Kent counties already have cameras that could be used for enforcement. However, he said, "we'll take what we can get."
Brilhart said Frederick County is willing to take the lead.
"If they need for us to be the guinea pigs, we're willing to stand up and do it," he said.
Brilhart said Frederick has installed 20 external cameras on its buses, though they are not used to generate tickets. He said the technology is quite accurate and can identify vehicles from either front or rear license plates. He said the bus driver would push a button to flag a violation so that when the video is turned over to law enforcement, officers could go straight to the time of the offenses. The technology notes exact time, date and GPS-determined locations and verifies that the signals were activated, he said.
Ely said the companies marketing the technology are motivated by profits rather than safety.
"Photo enforcement companies like ACS and SmartBus Live do not work for free; they will want to get a cut of the ticket revenue, and if they can issue more tickets by cutting corners or pushing the limits of the law, they will do so," he said.
But Malone said his sense is that the legislature will act — even if in a limited, tentative way.
"Any child getting killed is one too many," he said.
LaMarsh just wonders what makes so many drivers, including people with children and grandchildren of their own, so impatient.
"You're talking less than half a minute of your time for the safety of a child," she said.